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For a second, looking at this dying Lord in front of him, Lucien longs to make himself wake up. Perhaps he can try to draw another deep breath of the airless air and think about how he’s not breathing, which has always woken him up before. If he wakes up before she dies, perhaps she will live. That’s how it works in dreams, right?

But—what if it doesn’t? What if that’s just running away? What if, instead, she’ll die alone out here?

It’s that thought that sends him to his knees, lifting the Moonlit Lord’s upper torso a little, taking that outstretched hand. “I’m here,” he says, and if he’s still panicking, well, he’s been panicking this whole time. “What do you need? I’ll do it, whatever it is.”

Those eight eyes are fixed on him, and normally they glow so brightly that she nearly blinds any actors who look up at her directly, so that she can only look down at the stage with her new moon eye open and safely make eye contact. But now she’s so dim that he can see her otherwise human face here, the nose and mouth and general shape that makes him really register that what Katarin said may be true: that she was once just an actor like him. “G-give,” she rasps out, struggling to breathe. “I need—”

She can’t seem to get more words out, and there is only one thing he has ever known how to give to a Lord, and so he draws on that now. He closes his eyes, trying to focus on the feeling of her hand in his, and thinks of the lines Arcane uses if the scenes are arranged so that he mistakenly kills Revelle instead of Logos. “Oh, sweet Revelle, my revelation, why so quiet?” he begins, his voice shaky with tears. It’s part of the role, but fed right now by his very real fear. “You accused me once of not protecting you as I should. Is this the logical end to that fear? Is this truly how it ends? Does night’s bright eye, the moon, illuminate only your lifeless body?”

He dedicates this scene to the Moonlit Lord, forcing that power into it, letting the words and feelings pour out of his body as he clenches her hand. And when the scene ends, his eyes still clenched tightly closed, he feels her sigh and her hand loosen.

Lucien opens his eyes and he cannot see; she is glowing. He averts his gaze instead to the ground, sees silver light pouring into that cracked earth, and does not know if this is her power overflowing with renewed strength or if it is her lifeblood leaving her. He cannot imagine either helping, really, her power feeding it or her lifeblood spilling. Either way, this world is so empty, so dry—he can only believe that it will surely suck away whatever power is put to it, and he thinks about that, and his chest seizes at the thought. He himself is being sucked away into this ground where he cannot live and cannot die and cannot live and cannot die—

He wakes in a tangle of limbs and blankets, and he sloughs all of them off and stumbles over to the window, throwing it open and staring out at the moon. Is it paler than usual? Brighter? He can’t tell, not with the clouds roaming in front of it, and he feels a little absurd that this is his first impulse. The Moonlit Lord is not the moon itself; it’s just part of her portfolio, the things that power her, the magics and meanings associated with it.

“Lucien? What in the hells—” Shuni is sitting up, rubbing his face. “What happened?”

“The dream…” Lucien turns from the window, coming back over shakily. When he sits on the bed it feels less deliberate and more as if his legs wouldn’t hold him. “I went running in that world and found the Moonlit Lord. She was dying.”

Shuni sits up too, twisting around so his back is to the wall, the blankets piled in his lap. “I didn’t see that,” he says. “But I didn’t go anywhere. I just sort of sat down and dug in the dirt. I think I was looking for something? But of course there was nothing there. Nothing can thrive in that ground.” He shakes his head. “…So what did you do?”

It sort of hurts to remember. “I tried to give her the power to keep going,” Lucien says. “A dedication—I recited the scene where…” It’s foggy in his mind. What was the scene? “You know, if Arcane kills Revelle…” He can’t remember the lines. 

“Yeah, that scene,” Shuni says. “Did it help?”

“I don’t know,” Lucien says, letting go of the effort of remembering. “I guess I’ll have to find out later. From one of the other Lords, or… if she shows up again.”

Shuni lets out a breath, seeming a bit overwhelmed. “So these dreams, they’re not just happening? They can… actually kill? I mean, I’ve died in those dreams repeatedly, but I haven’t really died.”

“You’re not a Lord,” Lucien says. He hesitates only briefly over what to tell Shuni about this. But… anyone at the theater could have taken Shuni’s heart, and that makes everyone else there inherently untrustworthy, even Katarin. He can’t trust her, or any of the rest of the cast or crew. Not even the director, who he’d normally go to with concerns about a show. 

But, at this point, he’s made a promise to help Shuni; they’re in this together. “Listen, Katarin came to talk to me yesterday, after the show. It’s about the dreams.”

He tells Shuni everything, and Shuni sits there listening with an incredulous expression that melts into a frowning curiosity. When he gets to the end of it—the dreams, the prophecy, the potentials marked for change, the mysterious person who may have triggered it—Lucien asks Shuni, “Did she talk to you about any of this, or just me?”

“She hasn’t,” Shuni says. “I mean, it sounds like she got to you first because she thought you were me. …She really thinks I started this? I haven’t, by the way.”

“Sounds like she thinks it had to be one of us and doesn’t think it’s me.” Lucien doesn’t mention the mildly insulting reason why.

Shuni lets out a breath, tilting his head back against the wall with a clunk. “Well, it’s not me, and it sure sounds like it’s not you. So it’s either her, and she decided to turn us against each other in case we figured something out, or it’s another person that she hasn’t figured out as related. Marked with change, huh… so anyone with a tie to the concept of change could finish this ritual? Become exalted?”

Lucien nods, but the gesture slowly turns into a helpless shrug. “Theoretically. I only know what she said, which sounds like it’s only the one who started the ritual who would cause that ruination we keep seeing, but… she also admitted she didn’t have the wording entirely written down in her old notes. And of course, anything we know about that also relies on her having told us the truth.”

“So we essentially know nothing. Great.” Shuni’s expression is sour. “Well, I feel like it’d be too coincidental for whoever stole my heart to not be involved in this, since I was obviously given the casting call by the thief. Someone wanted me here, and if I’m one of the people marked by change, I guess there’s a reason.”

Flopping against Shuni, Lucien says softly, “So we find the culprit, we find your heart? Or vice versa. Finding your heart might be easier, and a way to figure out who started the ritual.”

“I wish it has been easy,” Shuni mutters sourly.

“Did you have help taking it out?” Lucien asks. “Where did you get the pendant?”

“Made a sacrifice to Lord the Endless,” Shuni says. “A big one, asking for a favor. The rib-opener was left for me under my pillow the next day, and I knew how to use it. You think I should try to talk to Lord the Endless to see if they can track it somehow?”

“It’s worth a try, if they show up at the play. Or maybe you can find another way to get their attention,” Lucien says. Then, “Fuck, the play. We have to get going.”

Shuni checks the clock. “We have a little time, if you have any plan for today’s performance, or anything you think we should do at the theatre…?”

[Please leave suggestions for Lucien in the comments.]

[Next Day]

[Previous Day]

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No pulse. Shuni doesn’t have a pulse. 

Lucien manages to keep himself from freezing through a pure act of will. He has to be wrong about this, right? The pulse is hard to feel in the wrist anyway; he’s just not picking it up.

“Fair enough, yes,” Shuni says, still involved in a conversation Lucien suddenly feels worlds away from. “Breakups are the common trend of relationships.”

Somehow, he responds like a normal person. “Not for everyone, surely…” He leans in, wrapping an arm around Shuni, kissing his cheek, his jaw, sliding down to kiss him lingeringly on the neck, over where his pulse should be.

Shuni lets out a soft sigh, shifting a little under those ministrations. “Oh, no, you have the occasional childhood sweethearts who stay wrapped up in each other forever, don’t you? But they’re the exception, not the rule.”

No, there’s definitely no pulse. Lucien wildly debates trying to hide that he’s noticed, then throws that thought to the wind. Bloody boxes hidden in a man’s private things is one thing, but they’re already sleeping together, his mouth is still on Shuni’s neck, he has every reason to have noticed it and ask about it.

“Um,” Lucien says. “Sorry. I just. Are you dead?”

“What?” Shuni sits up in the water, frowning at him. “Not since I last checked.”

“Just—your pulse—” 

For a moment, Shuni just stares at Lucien flatly, and then he slowly sinks back into the water again with another sigh. Either whatever Shuni saw in Lucien’s expression reassured him—Lucien himself isn’t sure what emotion he’s showing right now, not the best trait for an actor—or he’s decided that if Lucien wants to be rid of him, he’ll have to haul Shuni out of the tub bodily.

“No,” Shuni says. “No pulse. I’m not dead, though, my heart just isn’t in my body.”

“Oh, well, I suppose that’s fine then,” Lucien says, because what is he supposed to say to that? He sits back, running wet fingers through his own hair. “Is that what got stolen?”

Shuni’s shoulders seem to sag, and his hand comes up to toy with that pendant he’s still wearing over his remarkably shallow chest. “Yes,” he says. “They didn’t steal it directly out of my chest, though.”

There isn’t a scar or anything, but… “Did you take it out yourself? With that?”

“Mm, yes,” Shuni says, smiling briefly. “Think of it as a bottle opener, but for your ribs. My heartbreak was unpleasant, and I didn’t like the recovery from it either. With my heart safely in a box, I feel less. Not nothing, but… not as much. Things simply impact me less deeply. I thought it the best way to manage my recovery. Any lover I took after, I could simply judge how I felt about them from a distance and decide if and when I was ready to put my heart back.”

It all sounds rather exciting, put like that. “So how did it end up stolen? Did you show it to someone?”

“No. I have no idea how they even knew it was there. I check on it every morning before bed, make sure it’s clean, tip out the excess blood. But one morning, it was gone.” He grimaces, but as if he’s really just mildly inconvenienced about all that. “And under the box was the casting call sheet for this play, so I tried out. I’ve been searching the theatre when I can, trying to see if it’s there, and trying to figure out who might have taken it. Of course, this might all be a red herring, to distract me while they abscond with it to… wherever.”

It seems as though Shuni cannot ache, so Lucien decides to ache for him, at least right now. He leans in and hugs him again. “What does it mean for you, that someone else has your heart?”

“Well, the main thing is that they can kill me any time they want. A knife to the heart is as fatal if it’s out than if it’s in, regardless of how properly it was removed.” He seems tired now, and although he’d tensed briefly when Lucien wrapped his arms around him, he relaxes and leans into Lucien’s embrace. “…The water’s hot enough now.”

Lucien turns the gas off one-handed. “Is this why you weren’t Lord Crow’s type?”

“I suppose he must like wilder and brighter things than me,” Shuni agrees. “I don’t have much of a spark anymore. More’s the pity. I’ll have to try another Lord. Maybe the End or the Endless will have some insight, given my condition… I was really hoping the Old Magpie would help, though. But he just unleashed a flock in my face after I explained.” He sounds a bit cross about that one.

It explains the fall into the mud, anyway. Lucien hesitates. There’s a lot on his plate, dreams and prophecies and being drawn into a play that could end the world and all that, but… “I’d like to help,” he says. “I’ll work together with you on this, if you’ll let me—I can at least keep an eye out for a heart. Maybe I can talk to Lord Crow on your behalf?”

“If you can, then I’d like that,” Shuni says distractedly. He closes his eyes for a long moment. “Are you still willing to let me share your bed? Just for sleep. I’m afraid I don’t have much in me right now.”

Literally, Lucien manages not to say. “Of course,” he says. “Let me get you to bed. Are you hungry?”

“I’ll wait ’til morning. I’m too tired to eat.”

He should push Shuni to eat something, even just some bread, but he accepts it instead, and helps dry Shuni and get him to bed. “I’ll be along soon,” Lucien says, “if you don’t mind it being a bit crowded.”

“I don’t care,” Shuni says, but as Lucien turns away, he reaches out and catches Lucien’s sleeve briefly. “…Thanks. It’s really kind of you, under the circumstances.”

“You’ve shown me an awful lot of kindness too, for someone without a heart,” Lucien replies.

Shuni just lets go, so Lucien heads out, bathes himself in Shuni’s cooling water, tosses a last drink back, and refuses to think much more about it at all tonight. When he comes back, Shuni has tucked himself in against the wall to make space and is breathing deeply.

Lucien climbs into bed, trying not to crowd Shuni too much. He puts his head on the pillow, staring at the pale copper locks lying on the pillow next to him.

Despite himself, he falls asleep, and of course, he finds himself back in that awful dream again. This time, he panics, running, calling for something, someone, anyone, looking for something different, something he can do, something he can change.

And he finds something. Someone, sprawled out on the ground, gasping and trembling, as if she’s dying in this air that can’t kill anyone and can’t sustain anyone. For a moment, he doesn’t recognize her with how human she looks right now, but when he turns her over, he realizes she is the Moonlit Lord, her long silver hair gone to dusty tangles. Eight eyes make up her face, each in a different phase, and he stares into the only eye that is fully open, her full moon eye, and trembles. She is so dim.

She gasps, “Help—Help—” and holds a hand out to him. 

[Please leave suggestions for Lucien in the comments.]

[Next Day]

[Previous Day]

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Honestly, he’s glad to have this quiet time until dawn. Going from one thing to another has been rough, and for now he can just sit and think and drink. Mostly drink, admittedly. The think is starting to wear itself out.

Lucien has been making a lot of assumptions about a lot of things, but they’re not things he can come to a conclusion about by himself, either. If what Katarin says is true—another assumption—Shuni is at least having the dreams. He may or may not know more than what Lucien does. He may or may not want Lord Crow the way Lucien does.

Katarin accused him of being easily swayed, and maybe that’s extra reason not to buy everything she said at face value either. He’ll coax out information and form his own opinions.

He is about to pour himself another drink when he hears a light knocking, and he goes down the stairs carefully. He’s not drunk yet, not exactly, but he’s got a bit of fog around him and his legs are feeling weak.

He opens the door to find Shuni muddy—in streaks, and heavier on his hands, as if he’d fallen down at some point. He looks tired, and red-eyed, but remarkably lucid. “You said you wanted to talk to me,” Shuni says. “And here I am.”

“Come in,” Lucien says. “…You look beat. Can I pour you a bath? You can stay over tonight, not have to head all the way back after.”

“Ugh. I won’t say no. Sorry I just about ruined your clothes,” Shuni says, exaggerating the damage. “I’ll be grateful to have mine back after this.”

Lucien leads the way back up the stairs to his flat, sparing a moment to be a little self-conscious about the apparent differences in wealth. Shuni has a whole house; Lucien is renting a flat on the second floor of a house. But Shuni doesn’t seem to mind, sighing, following Lucien into the bathroom as he starts to draw the water and fires up the gas tank attached to the tub to heat it. “I warn you, hot water might knock me out. You’re right. I’m beat.”

“Still, you look in better condition than I expected, after meeting a Lord,” Lucien says. “I wasn’t half so together.”

“You didn’t seem so badly off,” Shuni says. He starts to strip down, lacking any shame. “Anyway, that’s just my curse, nothing gets to me too deeply these days. I’m unshakeable.”

“Hah,” Lucien says softly. “Did you meet him?”

“I met him,” Shuni says. “I suppose you’ll want to know what happened.”

“Fair’s fair,” Lucien points out. “I babbled my story out all over you.”

Shuni is just dropping Lucien’s clothes on the floor, and Lucien resolves to pick them up later to not be rude about it. “I met Lord Crow. He said he hadn’t been sure while we were on stage, but seeing me, he knew I wasn’t you. It was funny to him, I suppose. We talked.”

“A talk put you in the mud?”

“He startled me and I fell.”

The bath is about full, though not hot yet. Lucien gets a towel wet and offers it to Shuni so he can get the worst of the mud off first. “I’d been assuming you were into him, but it’s not sounding like that. Do you favor him in some other way?”

Shuni hesitates briefly, looking at the towel, then begins wiping his arms down. “…Yes. I thought I did, anyway. Something important to me was stolen from me not so long ago, and I’d do anything to get it back. Since Lord Crow is the patron of thieves, I thought perhaps he might be able to give me the power to find the thief and get it back.”

“He refused?’

“I wouldn’t say I’m his type,” Shuni says softly. He scrubs at his arms extra hard.

That’s interesting. Lucien puts that to one side for now, trying to get enough information to find where to put that puzzle piece. “…Have you been having strange dreams?”

“Oh, awful ones,” Shuni says. “You too, though, right? It’s just the stress of performance.”

“…Lord Crow asked me about my dreams,” Lucien says slowly. “It was something he, and maybe the other Lords, are aware of. I’ve started to wonder if you and I are dreaming of the same thing.”

Shuni looks at him blankly. “I mean, it seems like a standard stress dream. Empty land with no audience, nobody around, empty sky, cracked land.”

“It’s the same for me.”

“See?” The water’s warm enough for Shuni to at least get in now, and he slides in, spilling a little over the edge with a sigh as he settles, resting his head on the back of the tub. “Performance stress.”

“No, the exact same dream,” Lucien says, unable to hide his distress as he thinks about that dream. But he watches Shuni for a reaction.

Shuni stares blankly back, brows furrowed. “Huh. That’s odd. A scene of total desiccation?”

“Yes. I panic because nothing can live there, not even me, but it’s not somewhere to die in either.” 

“Oh, same. I mean, I don’t panic, it’s just depressing to me. I wonder why that is.”

Shuni seems confused about the similarity, perplexed and a bit perturbed, but nothing else. It doesn’t sound like the reaction of someone who knew about it already, but then, Shuni’s an actor. “I wonder too,” Lucien murmurs.

Sinking a little further, Shuni hmmms, the sound bubbling out of the water. He lifts his head again. “I mean, maybe it’s something the Lords are doing. You said Lord Crow asked you about it.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Lucien says. He’s still sitting beside the tub, where it was easier to adjust the heat settings, and he reaches up, putting a hand on Shuni’s where it’s hanging off the side of the tub. “Listen… I like you. I want to be your friend. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you… to either of us. If you know or find out anything about this, share with me?”

“…Sure,” Shuni says. “That’s a little intense, but fine.”

Lucien tries to laugh it off. “I guess I can be a little intense. I don’t mean to come on too strong, especially after yesterday. I know you can put up walls.”

“Can do that sometimes, yeah.” Shuni lets his arm fall further out of the tub, permissively.

“Have you had bad experiences with relationships before? You seem like someone who got hurt.” Lucien toys with Shuni’s hand and fingers, clasping them briefly, then running his fingers up to Shuni’s elbow, back down again. “I don’t want to, you know, bring up bad memories.”

Shuni snorts. “Ticklish. Sure I did. Got hurt bad, but who hasn’t been hurt by a lover?”

“Fair enough,” Lucien says. The water is hot, and Shuni is flushed, but Lucien realizes, as his fingers pass over Shuni’s wrist while he toys with it, that he does not feel a pulse.

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[Next Day]

[Previous Day]

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Actually, scratch that. Lucien realizes he has tons of questions. “Speaking of Shuni, how come he was the only one you approached about this?”

She winces. “Well. Shuni is… you know. I don’t mean it in a bad way, but he’s sharp, and good at getting what he wants. You’re…” She gestures a few times weakly with a hand, then takes a drink. “You’re not, or you haven’t seemed to be, anyway. You just do your work and go along with things that are suggested to you. You take direction well. So I figured that between the two of you, he’d be the one more likely to be up to something and be the one to confront.”

Ughhh. That’s fair. He doesn’t like it, but she’s not exactly wrong. He makes a face, mostly at himself, and pushes on. “You said something earlier in a weird language when you thought I was Shuni. What was it, and why did you expect him to recognize it?”

This time it’s Katarin’s turn to make a face. “It was faespeech, because. I don’t know. I was trying to make you, him, react. Like, you know, even if he didn’t speak it, the realization that I Knew Something might push him into making a mistake, and… It’s dumb. Sorry.”

Honestly, that embarrassed ramble makes him feel a little better. Like, maybe he isn’t the only one out of his depth about some kind of prophecy to end the world. Even so… he doesn’t know for sure that Katarin isn’t playing her own game. For all he knows, this could all be a lie to manipulate him into… well, something.

“Tell me more about this prophecy,” he says, shelling some bar nuts with slightly shaky fingers. If it is a lie, he can at least make her work for it, and if not, it’s useful information. “What is the exact wording?”

She huffs and takes another drink. “I’ll have to translate,” she says. “Let’s see… ‘a ritual shall begin to make a new Lord. It will use the standard vehicle of deliverance, but it will be started deliberately, with malevolence in heart. Those creatures marked by change who perform will experience symptoms of the potential ascendance through their dreams. The one who masters the finale can, if they know how, claim Lordhood, but if it is the one who started the ritual, they will become a Lord to destroy all other Lords, to corrupt and desiccate from the inside out, and devour the world along with it.’ That’s pretty close, I think, to what I remember.”

“That’s some prophecy,” he manages. It raises more questions than he already had. “So it sounds pretty certain it couldn’t be started accidentally if the prophecy says this specifically. Wow. Didn’t you ask the fae more about it?”

She sighs, doodling strange shapes on the table in condensation. “That’s the problem. They’re full of prophecies. I have hundreds of their bullshit pronouncements floating around in my head in more or less detail. That one stuck out, but it’s in translation and from memory and among things like ‘ware he who carries five pumpkins up the stairs at night.'”

“I’d also beware that. That sounds dangerous.”

“Right. You get me.” She grimaces. “So I didn’t know to ask more. I didn’t realize what was even happening at first until I was here, a changeling with two other actors with ‘change’ in their name, in a play, and the dreams were happening, and then I was like, fuck. I had to search my old diaries even to find the reference to it to jog my memory.”

Lucien rubs his forehead. “Before I go on, what’s ‘the standard vehicle of deliverance’ mean, exactly?”

“Plays. Lords are actors before they become Lords.”

That detail nearly blows all his other questions out of his mind. “What?”

Katarin gives him an impatient look. “That’s why plays get dedicated to them, and why that’s the main method of sacrifice they attend.” She sighs, then, losing her sting. “The number of them showing up for this one also helped make me realize something was wrong. …Honestly, though, I’m not surprised you don’t know. It’s not common information for anyone. If it was, everyone would try to do it, but a play that causes an ascension happens maybe once every few hundred years at best. The fae know about it, so I do. Most humans don’t, so you don’t. …I didn’t become an actor for that, though, being a changeling just made me well suited to playing roles, so why not make money doing what I’m good at?”

This is a lot to take in. Almost too much. He’d had an entire list of questions and it’s dissolving quickly. He tries to focus. “You mentioned symptoms?”

“I meant the dreams,” she says.

He’d originally thought that the dreams were just his, but… she’d asked ‘Shuni’ if he were dreaming. “You’re dreaming too?”

“Yeah. Shuni should be as well, I’d think, since he’s marked by change. Again, this had to be started by someone who would be marked by change and thus able to do the ritual. If it’s not me—and it’s not, why would I even be talking to you about this if so, I’d just pull it off while nobody suspected anything—and it’s not you, it’s probably Shuni. Not definitely,” she adds. “After all, I’m not as obviously marked as you two are by your names, so there might be others less obviously marked. But given the circumstances, doesn’t it seem like the most likely option is Shuni?”

Reluctantly, he finds his thoughts being drawn back to that strange box he found at Shuni’s place. Could it be involved? Something that triggered the ritual, perhaps? He wants to ask, but she’s already so convinced it’s Shuni that he doesn’t want to give her more evidence before he’s sure one way or the other. “So how do we stop it?”

She hesitates. “Well. Probably. We kill whoever it is who’s doing it.”

“We can’t kill people,” he hisses back, horrified.

“We can if it’s to save the world!” She throws up her hands. “Listen, good talk, but it’s not what I thought it was going to be. I’m going home.”

Lucien scrubs his hands over his face. Somehow they’ve drained the pitcher already. “Sure,” he says. “Listen, I do… I do want to help stop this. Can we talk again later?”

She nods briefly. “…Of course. I guess we’re conspirators now. I’ll try to think of a way to help catch Shuni out, to see if we can prove if it’s him or not. Obviously we’re not going to do anything until we have better evidence.”

“…Thanks.” He watches her go, then settles up and meanders his own way home.

The next few hours are spent in a haze, really, of questioning his own reality, looking through his scripts, wondering about how he’s always known about the power of them, and how that power is syphoned off to the Lords all the time, but how he’s never really questioned it. That’s just how things are. The Lords are, and plays help feed them.

But now there is more to it, and Shuni will be here very soon—likely in some kind of state if he did end up meeting Lord Crow—and Lucien needs to decide what to do once Shuni gets here.

[Please leave suggestions for Lucien in the comments.]

[Next Day]

[Previous Day]

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Lucien only hesitates one brief moment over his decision. He truly doesn’t want to miss the chance to have one of the Lords speak with him, and knows it might be a once in a lifetime opportunity… 

But he wants to know what Katarin was talking about more than that. He just has no idea about any of the things she’s been saying, and the information might be important later, given that it’s tied to the dreams. Important for Lord Crow, for himself, even for Shuni. After all, he’s decided to talk to Shuni honestly later, and shouldn’t he get as much information as he can for that?

He sighs, flexing his arms now that the costumers have finished cramming him back into Shuni’s shirt and taking Logos’s costume away for cleaning. “I’ll go drinking with you, of course,” he says. “I agree, we should talk.”

They finish up, and she smiles at him, tossing her hair back over her shoulder and offering him her arm. “Shall we, then?”

“Let’s,” he drawls, and takes it.

They head out into the night and he tries not to look around for anyone—anything—who might be watching from the shadows, concerned that he’d make eye contact with one of the Lords and then everything would go topsy-turvy from there. Katarin doesn’t start talking right away, and he himself waits until they’re well away from the theatre before clearing his throat. “You asked before if I was the… person you were looking for, or if it was Lucien.”

“Right,” she says softly. “Do you have more of an answer now?”

“Well, that’s complicated,” he says. “You see, I’m Lucien.”

He felt her tense, and she slowly turns her head to look at him. She squints, searching his features more closely. “What the fuck,” she says indelicately. “How in the world above and below—”

“It wasn’t easy,” he admits. “But we look so much alike and we’ve studied each other’s roles. I caught Lord Crow’s attention last night, and Shuni wanted to… defer extra attention from me.”

She lets out a breath between her teeth. “And you’re still sane? Never mind, I don’t want to know.” With her free hand, she rubs her face. “So is it you?”

“It’s not me. It might be Shuni, but if it is, I don’t know, because I don’t know what it is,” he says, trying to rein in his impatience. “Listen, though, you’ve revealed enough that you might as well come out with it. Please, Katarin, please. Explain.”

“…Let’s drink,” she says softly.

They get a private booth in the Fox’s Den, and Katarin orders a pitcher of beer, and the two of them pour. Katarin sighs, runs her hands through her hair, and says, “According to the symptoms given in the prophecy, I believe the play is being hijacked into a ritual to create a new Lord, and it may destroy the existing Lords in the process,” she says flatly. “Maybe even the world. The potentials are people marked for or by change, and the dreams, I think, are showing what the world may be like after this one person gains the power. They’re showing that it’s impending. I thought it might be Shuni who was doing it.”

He sat back in his seat, stunned. “Wait, what? How are Shuni or I marked for change?”

“It’s in your names,” she says. “Io-morphe. Shuni.”

“Shuni means ‘change’?”

“Changed, but yes,” she says gloomily. 

“What about you?”

“I’m a changeling,” she says bluntly. “I was switched at birth. That’s why I know about the prophecy. The folks underneath told it to me.”

“What the fuck, Kat.” He doesn’t know what else to even say to that.

“It is what it is,” she says, like that wasn’t a strange revelation even for an actor. “So the three of us are involved in change, in our names and in what we are. So if the one who’s started things in motion isn’t me, and if it isn’t you, it must be Shuni.”

Lucien stares at his mug, stomach clenched. “Wait, you think someone’s doing it deliberately? It’s not just …happening? Not just… the prophecy happening to us?”

“It can’t happen accidentally. Someone’s set it on this course,” Katarin says. She takes a long drink. “We’re caught up in it by our nature because we all have the potential, but someone has triggered this, and that someone will try to reap the benefits in the finale. So I guess it’s Shuni, like I thought.”

Lucien hesitates. Shuni obviously does have something going on, but… this? Why would he be so hungry for an existing Lord if so? Yet Lucien can’t disprove it, either, he doesn’t think. 

His mind is whirling. He needs more information, and has no idea what questions to even ask.

[Please leave suggestions for Lucien in the comments.]

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